League of Legends: Beginner to Diamond – The Map

Welcome to the first installment in the League of Legends: Beginner to Diamond series. Over the course of the next few months we’ll be covering everything you need to know to start out, stay relevant, and later on, rank up in Summoner’s Rift.

What is League of Legends?

If you’re here, you probably already know at least a little about the game, but just in case let’s start at the beginning.

League of Legends (LoL) falls under the MOBA—Multiplayer Online Battle Arena—genre. The aim in most MOBA games is to destroy the main objective located in your enemy’s base to end the game, while lesser and side objectives yield bonuses when destroyed to help you along the way. All the while you want to be killing the enemy players as often as you can to earn gold and dominate the map.

In League of Legends, each team has 3 turrets and an inhibitor in each of the 3 lanes that run from one corner of the map to the other. Pushing into the enemy base by destroying turrets opens up two additional turrets and the main objective, the nexus. When one side’s nexus is destroyed the game ends. Between the lanes lies the jungle, host to strong monsters that hand over gold, experience and buffs to anyone brave enough to venture into their territory and kill them.

Lesser Objectives

To get to the main objective, the nexus, you need to destroy lesser objectives called ‘turrets’ and ‘inhibitors’. Each have different stats and rewards for the team that destroys them. Turrets will fire powerful bullets at any enemy that gets too close in order to protect themselves. Be warned, Turrets have 2 passive abilities that change how much they’ll hit you for. The first is “Warming Up”, every time a turret strikes a champion (player character) it gains 37.5% bonus damage, capping at 75%. The second is “Heated Up”, after the tower reaches the cap of 75% for Warming Up consecutive attacks against the same champion deal 25% additional damage capping at 50%. This means a Heated Up outer turret at 7 minutes will deal 225 damage instead of 180 on it’s second consecutive hit.

Outer turrets, the ones located closest to the river section of the map, have 2550 health and 60 armor at the start of the game. However, for the first 7 minutes of a game they take 30 less damage from champion basic attacks. On top of this, outer turrets also start with 152 attack damage (AD) and 100 magic resist (MR), these values increase by 4 and 1 respectively every minute starting at 30 seconds and cap at 180 AD and 107 MR at 6:30 (minutes into the game). Destroying an outer turret yields a reward of 100 global gold (every player on the team receives global rewards) and 150 bonus gold is split between the players who participated in the destruction.

Inner turrets are located behind outer turrets, only after destroying an outer turret will you be able to destroy the one behind it. Inner turrets also starts with 2550 health as well as 170 AD, 60 armor and 100 MR. Again, these values increase at +4 AD, +1 armor and +1 MR every minute starting at 8 minutes. These values cap at 250 AD, 80 armor and 120 MR at 27:00. Inner turrets reward 30 global experience, 125 global gold and 100 gold is split between the players who took down the tower.

Blue side inhibitor and inhibitor turret

Inhibitor turrets are next down the line, they guard an inhibitor and are the first line of defense in an enemy base. Again they start with 2550 health, along with 190 AD, 67 armor and 100 MR, again increasing by +4 AD, +1 armor and +1 MR every minute starting at 8 minutes. It caps at 310 AD, 97 armor and 130 MR at 37 minutes. On top of this, they also heal at a rate of 15 health per 5 seconds. Upon destruction, an inhibitor turret grants 100 global experience and 170 global gold, there is no bonus gold for assisting with the destruction.

Inhibitors are located behind an inhibitor turret, they have 4000 health, deal no damage and have no armor or MR. Once an inhibitor is destroyed the player who gets the last hit on it is rewarded 50 gold and super minions will begin spawning in that lane for the destroying team. Super minions stronger than regular minions and provide a big advantage (more on minions in a later installment) in winning the game or forcing the enemy to defend their nexus while your team takes other objectives. Destroyed inhibitors respawn after 4 minutes and super minions will stop spawning.

As long as one inhibitor is destroyed, the nexus turrets become open to attack, however, if all previously destroyed inhibitors respawn, these towers and the nexus return to being invulnerable. These are the final line of defense for the nexus. Nexus turrets have 1925 health and just like inhibitor turrets they regenerate at 15 health per 5 seconds. They begin with 180 AD, 65 armor and 100 MR, and cap at 300 AD, 95 armor and 130 MR after 37:00 minutes.

Blue side nexus and two nexus turrets

Main Objective

The nexus: this is what separates you from your next game.
After the nexus turrets have been destroyed, the nexus becomes vulnerable to attack. The nexus has no armor or magic resist, deals no damage, has 5500 health and regenerates 25 health per 5 seconds. Destroying the enemy nexus before your own is destroyed earns you the win and rewards the person to get the last hit with 50 gold despite the fact that the game is over.

With the basics of turrets and inhibitors done, you can start applying this to your game.
How hard is that first turret shot going to hit you?
How hard will you hit it?
What will you do with the 4 minutes before that inhibitor comes up?

This is the beginning of learning to push lanes, and also how to defend them. In the next chapter we’ll be covering the space between the lanes— the jungle and the monsters that dwell there.

See you there!

About The Author

Keith Mitchell is the Founder and Editor in Chief of The Outerhaven. A grizzled IT professional during the day, but a passionate lover of video games after his 9-5 grid. Loves playing the Dark Souls series and has been gaming since he was 6 years old. You can find him on Twitter as @Shadowhaxor or you can email her at keith.mitchell@theouterhaven.net.